This is the first part of a series that aims to bust some myths about booze.

Hangovers suck and they’re probably best avoided. But once you’ve got one, can you get rid of it? People swear by their favourite hangover cures — insisting that if you just follow their advice, you’ll free yourself of the post-intoxicated state.

Can they be avoided by drinking only expensive wines? Will your hangover be worse if you mix spirits and beer? Do some people never get hangovers? If you get drunk easily, will your hangovers be less severe? Does alcohol kill brain cells that never grow back? Is alcohol more or less addictive than heroin?

These are just some of the questions I’ll be exploring through a series of posts on booze-related myths and realities.

I was moved to look into this when I was faced with the seemingly very widely held belief that cheap wines give you worse hangovers than expensive wines. While I know very little about the biology of alcohol intoxication, this just seemed to me to be utterly implausible. If it is true, then it stands to reason that what really gives you the hangover is something other than the alcohol. And if that is true, then presumably you could get a hangover by drinking something other than alcohol. But this seems absurd. So (by what philosophers call reductio ad absurdum) our initial premise must be wrong (or one of our logical steps was wrong).

So, somewhere along the way, I’ll try to find the answer to that, and many other alcohol related questions.

For the first post in the series I want your help. I want you to tell me all your alcohol-related questions that you were too afraid to ask. Throughout the series, I’ll try to answer them by sifting through published papers and speaking to people who’s job it is to know (scientists, I mean). Do you have tried-and-true hangover cure? Have you heard about a cure that you’d like to know more about? Are you worried about some putative effect of alcohol consumption? Leave a comment below or email me.

One thing that is of central concern to this series is the question of what a hangover is. In a paper called “The alcohol hangover – A puzzling phenomenon”, one researcher put the question as follows.

The alcohol hangover is an intriguing issue since it is unknown why these symptoms are present after alcohol and its metabolites are eliminated from the body.

The paper continues:

Although numerous scientific papers cover the acute effects of alcohol consumption, researchers largely neglected the issue of alcohol hangover. This lack of scientific interest is remarkable, since almost everybody is familiar with the unpleasant hangover effects that may arise the day after an evening of excessive drinking, and with the ways these symptoms may affect performance of planned activities.

This researcher explains that the popular belief that dehydration is the cause of hangover symptoms is almost certainly false. More likely, he thinks, are the hormonal changes and changes to the immune system that occur following a heavy drinking session. As we will see, not everyone agrees.

The plausibility of many of the putative myths and realities I consider will no doubt depend on the precise nature hangovers and alcohol intoxication — something I hope to shed some light on over the next few posts.

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29 Comments

A friend of mine used to take some sort of memory-enhancing pills during his university exams because he believed they helped him to study better. He always claimed that a pleasant side-effect of the pills was that he wouldn’t get hangovers… I can’t remember the details very well – think it was the kind of pills older people get prescribed when they start become forgetful – but if you come across anything like that, maybe it would be interesting.

Would definitely be interesting to hear more about the dehydration story. I always thought that’s where the hangover came from, so that you could avoid the worst of it by drinking lots of water together with your alcohol.

In my student days there were also lots of stories that you could eat greasy food or even drink some olive oil before going out to put a film on the inner lining of your stomach, which would slow down the intake of alcohol in the bloodstream via your stomach. I remember reading somewhere once that this could be dangerous: if the film ‘breaks’ at some point, your stomach suddenly starts taking in all the alcohol that has accumulated in it into your bloodstream, so you would be liable to get alcohol poisoning. Never really believed much of this story, but who knows…

Some people (such as myself) have never experienced a hangover. I have gotten sick from drinking, but the sickness has never hung over the next day. Why is it that some people get hangovers whereas others don’t? And what determines the severity of the hangover (some people seem to get it worse than others)?

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A lot of friends say that a glass of water before going to bed gets you saved from any hangover. I have also heard from my grandmother the olive oil theory since it “covered your stomach and protected it from the alcohol”. Nevertheless, eating anything greasy usually makes you throw up if you’re hung-over, so sounds like myth.

As well, pills like Hepabionta are said to protect your liver from the damage of the alcohol. Following the question of what is a hangover, I was wondering if a pill could actually protect you from a hangover.

Thank you, great idea. This must be one of the topics most full of myths.

Anyway, here is my bit: when I have really bad hangover next day, the one including head-ache, sickness and even vomiting, one bottle of gatorade, powerade or anything like that seems to help me almost instantly. Even when I throw up after drinking water, I never throw up after gatorade.

I have sometimes noticed that when I drink enough to become buzzed or drunk and stay awake long enough to return to total sobriety that I often find my attention and focused to be enhanced, and I find tasks like reading, writing, and studying much easier. I’ve had a few friends with similar experiences, and I’m wondering if this is a widespread phenomenon in many kinds of people or is possibly something that happens only in anxious people (like myself) after the alcohol dampens their overly excited brain to a state where it is better able to focus.

“our initial premise must be wrong (or one of our logical steps was wrong)”.
this does not necessarily follow: it’s possible that there are substances in the cheaper cuts that, in the presence of alcohol, will make you as sick as a brown dog the next day. perhaps it’s synergistic.

anecdotally, i sure have noted the difference in level of hangover when nasty cheap wines – particularly red – as opposed to fine wines have been drunk.

I’d like to understand why some alcoholic drinks elicit different behaviors than other alcoholic drinks. Or if that’s a myth. For example, are some people “mean drunks” when they drink tequila, but jovial when drinking beer? Why would that be?

I have found that, if I can still stomache it, fruit can help me in these dark hours. Greasy food, preferably with carbs and salt, also has a positive effect. I’m always juggling the two since they don’t combine easily.
Looking forward to the whole series! Good stuff.

I am most interested in the topic of alcohol intolerance for the following reasons. I am now in my mid-50s. I started drinking in college – and, like many dumb college students, did engage in binge drinking on occasion. I continued to drink after college – but mostly only beer. I have always suffered from severe hangovers if I drank too much. In my late 20s I started to develop an intolerance to alcohol such that, ultimately, even one beer (or less) would give me a hangover – almost instantly. Needless to say I stopped drinking. Around the same time I started to experience fatigue and tingling. This culminated (over a period of a couple of months) in losing sensation entirely on the left side of my body. I was dragging my left foot which seriously affected my gait. After being hospitalized and tested (pre-MRIs), a tentative diagnosis of MS was pronounced. It did not get worse — though, in fact, some of the worst symptoms abated. I have continued, however, to experience (virtually on a constant basis) fatigue, transient numbness, tingling, and “dark spots” in my vision. I still was unable to drink. I also found that I developed sleep problems – in part because getting a good night’s sleep became essential to my feeling as well as I possibly could. After some years of dealing with these sleep problems I got on a low dose of Elavil – which I still take today (25 mg/night). Some time after I had been on the Elavil a while, I had the occasion to try a glass of wine. Much to my surprise – I was able to drink without getting instantly sick. This remained the case for many years. But then in my late 40s/early 50s – I once again started to lose my tolerance to alcohol. Today, I cannot drink even one glass of wine without getting a hangover.

I read a recent article (as of Jan 2010) touting the discovery that alcohol intolerance is caused by the inactivity (in some people) of the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2), and that a molecule called ALDA-1 can activate the defective enzyme to help break down the toxic compounds in alcohol. There is also belief that the defective ALDH2 enzyme can cause disorders of the CNS – including Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimers.

I wonder if my “MS” is caused by a a defective ALDA-2 enzyme — that may be helped by the intravenous administration of ALDH-1? (Right now there is no pill-form of ALDH-1 available).

According to the January, 2010 article, the administration of ALDA-1, which activates the defective ALDH-2, effectively combats alcohol intolerance.

Any light you can shed on the above recent discoveries — including where one can obtain an injection of ALDH-1 – would be greatly appreciated.

Thiamine is depleted when alcohol is metabolized ALDH2. Taking a tablet of thiamine within a couple of hours after starting drinking can keep ALDH2 levels higher which results in the maximum rate of metabolism of alcohol.

Ethanol is also metabolized according to zero-order kinetics which means that drinking twice as much does not lead to twice as much being metabolized. There’s a ceiling at which alcohol cannot be metabolized any faster. Thiamine helps keep that ceiling higher. Without thiamine, levels of ALDHs drop and alcohol is metabolized more slowly, especially the metabolism of acetaldehyde to acetic acid.

The latest clash occurred in Hotan Prefecture, in the southern part of Xinjiang, whose population is predominantly Uighur. The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking group sharing many affinities with people across Central Asia, and most follow relatively moderate forms of Sunni Islam. Many Uighurs resent the growing number of Han Chinese people, who have been attracted to Xinjiang by jobs in farming, energy production and mining.

This series doesn’t seem to have got very far four years later, which is a shame because it sounded like it was going to be interesting. I get apocalyptic hangovers that prevent me from even moving and usually last until after 9pm. Then after many years of internet searches and trial and error, looking for a solution, I found that electrolytes were it. For maximum hangover protection I have a bottle of Powerade or Gatorade or Lucozade Sport or any other isotonic, electrolyte drink before having alcohol, another bottle before going to bed and another in the morning, and I don’t get a hangover at all. It’s like magic. In fact it’s a bloody revelation. Even just one bottle before going to bed has a massive impact. I’ve read that it’s because it replaces essential minerals needed to break down alcohol which your body washes out when you go to the loo a lot while drinking, and it also rehydrates you and, in the morning, gives you sugar to combat the insulin overdose your body creates in reaction to alcohol. Whether that is all correct or not, I don’t know, but it works. I have a friend, though, who never gets hangovers at all, and has never had one. I’d like to know why not, as I’m worried he may be extra terrestrial.

About

This blog is about science and science journalism: good, bad, and bogus. While most of the posts are about bad and bogus science and science writing, I try to find the time to reflect on good examples too.

I am a freelance science writer and I teach philosophy at the University of Sydney.